Why Linux System Administrators Need Programming Skills

In simple terms, System Administration refers to the management of hardware and software systems. Some of the major tasks performed by a system administrator include adding and removing hardware, installing operating systems, creating, managing and removing users and groups, installing, upgrading and removing software, performing backups and monitoring the system.

A system administrator is also responsible for troubleshooting, documentation and, importantly securing a system. On the other hand, programming is concerned with writing scripts, programs to developing user applications or software.

Does a Linux system administrator need programming skills? In this article, we will elaborate on answer to this question. We will explain why learning programming concepts are significant for Linux system administration.

This article is specifically prepared for Linux users aspiring to become professional sysadmins (from now on referring to system administrators).

Best Command-Line FTP Clients for Linux

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol used for transferring files between a client and a server on a computer network. The very first FTP applications were made for the command line before GUI Operating Systems even became a thing and while there are several GUI FTP clients, developers still make CLI-based FTP clients for users who prefer using the old method.
Here’s a list of the best command-line based FTP clients for Linux.

Why Windows Containers Are Less Attractive Than Linux Containers

The fact that you can run Docker containers on Windows as well as Linux is amazing. Yet, I sometimes struggle to see a clear use case for Windows containers. Compared to Linux containers, there are fewer obvious reasons to run containers on Windows.
I know that’s a somewhat controversial statement, so let me walk through the various reasons why Windows containers are much less attractive than Linux containers.
Also: Streamlining Software Development and Distribution with Containers [Ed: Paid-for SPAM from EMC. “Buying the news”… the new “biz model”? Companies literally buying not only the narratives but also the space and the staff?]

Android and GNU/Linux Software on Chrome OS

The new feature was first noticed by Keith I Myers. It is available in Chrome OS 76.0.3789.0, which is the first dev build of Chrome OS 76. It goes without saying that the feature is unstable right now. It is in the very early stages, so bugs and stability issues are to be expected. Also, keep in mind that GPU acceleration is only supported on a handful of Chromebooks...

For the past few years, it’s been possible on many Chromebooks to install the Play Store and run Android apps. This opened the door for Chromebooks to become more than just glorified web browsers. Now, Google is looking to make some major under-the-hood changes to Chrome OS’s Android apps support, which may allow for a long-requested feature.

With the help of Natural Language Processing, an organisation can gain valuable insights, patterns, and solutions. Python is one of the widely used languages and it is implemented in almost all fields and domains. In this article, we list down 10 important Python Natural Language Processing Language libraries.

On June 27th, Red Hat will not only be hosting one of the best technical gatherings of 2019, but it will be doing so in Washington D.C. — not San Francisco, Seattle, or ... DevNation Federal conference will bring together industry experts and key maintainers of popular open source projects in a one-day immersive conference for federal developers.

The bug report count of KTextEditor (implementing the editing part used in Kate/KWrite/KDevelop/Kile/…) and Kate itself reached again some value over 200.
If you have time and need an itch to scratch, any help to tackle the currently open bugs would be highly appreciated.
The full list can be found with this bugs.kde.org query.
[...]
The team working on the code is small, therefore please be a bit patient if you wait for reactions. I hope we have improved our reaction time in the last months but we still are lacking in that respect.

In the last month, we’ve polished the user interface and added the last planned features to Blender 2.80. The details can be found in the weekly development notes.
Now we are freezing the user interface, so that there is a stable base for creating documentation and tutorials. Settings will stay in the same place and screenshots should remain valid for the final 2.80 release. A handful of menu entries may be added, or a tooltip might be improved, but nothing major that would break documentation.

In order to meet the July release target for Blender 2.80, there is now an API and user-interface freeze on this next feature update for this leading open-source, cross-platform 3D modeling software.
Blender 2.80 has now entered its UI and API freeze milestone for the 2.80 release. The Blender settings should also be maintained now moving forward for the Blender 2.80 release and its Python API compatibility, including for add-ons.

FreeBSD 11.3 Beta 1

24 May: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD 11.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

While FreeBSD 12 is the latest and greatest stable series since the end of last year, for those still on FreeBSD 11 there is the 11.3 update due out for release in July while this weekend the first beta was issued.
FreeBSD 11.3 offers up the latest security updates and other stable bug fixes over FreeBSD 11.2 that was released nearly one year ago. But for those craving all the latest features and functionality, FreeBSD 12 is in release form or there is also FreeBSD 13-CURRENT.